My baby turns six tomorrow (Monday) and we had agreed, him included, to have his family birthday dinner tonight (Sunday). We always try to do the family thing on the actual day though it’s not been unknown to have it a day early or late if family life makes it easier.
Deal was, I took DS to the park, where a few families from school were meeting up, and DH and the older 3 children (8,9,11) decorated cakes, made dinner and so on. DS started prep, first year of school, last Thursday. We’re in Australia and he’s on the older edge of the year.
All the above is background. We came home and the older children had made 2 cakes, decorated with ninjago, set up Netflix to play a happy birthday from ninjago video and made up a show for him, dressing up as other favourite characters set up the presents and gone out of the way to make it special.
And he came in and cried. Took all the Lego off the cake and cried because there was icing on Lloyd garmadon. Cried because he can’t open the Lego ninjago spinners until tomorrow because they say 6-14 and he isn’t 6 yet. He literally attached himself to me and buried his head and cried throughout dinner, while they tried to show him all they’d done.
The big lot were reasonably understanding but I feel awful for them because all 3 worked really hard, together, to do something special and it fell worse than flat.
And I feel terrible for my youngest, because he was so distressed and upset and clearly he was more emotionally exhausted from school than I’d realised. But also, unreasonably annoyed that instead of being happy he managed to upset everyone.
I’m totally being unreasonable to think he is old enough now to be just a little bit appreciative of his siblings, right? Tomorrow is his first full school day ever, and he’s probably a bit overwhelmed by the fact that he’ll be centre of attention when they sing HB and the icy poles we bought are handed out.